Blogger's Quilt Festival: Little Gem

I know photos2fabric quilts are ho-hum for some, but I have fallen in love with the technique.  It probably doesn't hurt that I am OBSESSED with the University of Florida Herbarium.    Like the Nymphaeaceae I entered in May 2011, this is a central photo of a specimen collected at the Kanapaha Botanical Garden.

& so, my entry in the May 2012 Blogger's Quilt Festival:  Little Gem.  The central image was printed (by me) on a deskjet, as was the information label on the back (it is the label information from the FLAS # 211550 specimen itself).  The frame is one of my favorite piecing techniques, foundation-free strings.  That's when you make giant sheets of varied-width strips & then cut them on a 45degree angle & then work with all that open bias on every edge (I will give you a hint though, the seams of the strips are actually quite stabilizing; I would rather work with a foundation-free string block than any other block  with just one open biased edge).

The frame is machine quilted but the medallion image is hand stitched.  A friend was kind enough to open her vast embroidery floss collection & we matched the colors in the blossom as closely as we could.